Uladzimir Matskevich: The majority of Belarusans will appreciate Decree No.3

However, the state won’t be able to involve “loafers” to the legal economy. To supply the state budget at their expense is also a vain hope.

The reasons and consequences of the Decree’s adoption in the interview with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service covers Uladzimir Matskevich, the head of the Board of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus “.

- What are the differences and similarities in fight on parasitism in the USSR and fight on parasitism in modern Belarus?

- The differences are very deep.

The fight on parasitism in the USSR was logically tied to the ideology ruling in the Soviet Union; the ideology based on simple, clear, and old-fashioned principles: he who isn’t working doesn’t eat. The Soviet Union was living at the expense of the working class, seizing everything they earned. The Soviet Union and socialism were analogous to the state slavery, regardless of the kind of labor its subjects were involved in.

Belarus doesn’t have a ruling ideology. The officials have chaotic socialistic images they inherited from the Soviet Union, fragmentary ideas about the market economy, about the social state that they inherited in European countries: Germany and Sweden. And it is from this medley of ideas about ideologies that the idea to tax non-working citizens came from.

The principles of state budget and national wealth formation differ in state “slavery” and in modern Belarus. In the USSR the earnings were taken completely and only minimum needed to survive was left.

In the market economy state budget is to a large degree formed from taxes. The more taxes the state will collect, the stronger the budget will be; and the fullness of the budget affects the state’s ability to perform its obligations before the nation.

Everything got messed up in Belarus: the state expropriates all that was earned at the enterprises as well as supplies that come from taxes, including those from individuals. Basically, all citizens pay taxes: those, who can declare their incomes, pay income tax, whereas those, who work in shady business are also paying taxes, for example, when purchasing something.

State officials justify the necessity of introducing tax on non-working citizens with social goods that they are using: free medicine, allowances, and so on. But these are problems of organizing correct taxation and functioning of the economy, not citizens. The state is just trying to get rid of its own problems and burden citizens with them.

- Lukashenka has finally signed the Decree on fighting with parasitism despite the negative reaction of the society. None of the experts has noticed the benefits that the campaign on fighting with loafers will bring to the state. What is the hidden sense of this decision then?

- Decree No.3 is not a fight on parasitism; it’s an attempt to tax those, who have income that isn’t controlled by the state. Make citizens pay taxes is a sensible and understandable decision that is used by market economies, too. However, an attempt to get everything possible from people, whose work the state cannot control and make them leave shady economy is inadequate. And all expert conclusions prove that. An attempt to impose an arbitrary tax on people won’t stimulate their involvement in legal economy, just like the state won’t be able to significantly supply budget at their expense.

From whatever side you look, the decree looks inadequate anyway. The attempt doesn’t correspond neither to the announced goals nor to the principles of market economy work in general.

- 445 thousand Belarusans are on the “loafers” list, not even counting their families. Thus, about a million citizens are to suffer from this “initiative”. It seems that the ruling regime declared economic war against its own people: the state is not only abstains from giving, but takes away from people, as it happened with senior citizens, who didn’t work long enough to get a right for pension… Or am I misunderstanding something?

- You are just exaggerating.

The Decree won’t spread to 450 thousand people. It has a lot of weak places that will enable non-working citizens evade it. It won’t even destroy shady economy, as to pay the tax on parasitism is much cheaper than official taxes for those involved in shady business.

The majority of Belarusans will appreciate Decree No.3. It might stimulate registration of unemployed. The hopes some oppositionists have re this Decree are vain, just like the hopes for mass protests of individual entrepreneurs. Nothing like that will happen, And even if it happens, it will be related to mass unemployment, not with the Decree.

- Presidential campaign is about to take place. Campaign against loafers won’t make the regime more popular. Have the authorities completely lost ties with reality or are they ruined from within?

- I want to calm down those, who think that authorities won’t be able to use this Decree in the election campaign – they will. In situation when standard of living and incomes of the population are decreasing “fight on parasitism” will be appreciated by economically illiterate part of population. The regime hasn’t lost ties with reality; vice versa, the decree is based on this reality.

- How will Belarusan society react to the Decree?

- Economically active part of population that is involved in shady business will do as it has always been doing: study the document attentively and find the ways to evade it.

Considerable part of people working is state sector will consider the decree to be a positive phenomenon and approve it.

The poorest layers of the population will be suffering; however, this will be very small part of population.